The Woman Who Wouldn't Die Page 15

  ‘He stayed with the French foreign service and was transferred hither and thither. But still he kept up this correspondence with the French embassy. The stamps are collectors’ items. Istanbul. Mauritius. West Africa. The writer spent most of his life on the road. Each letter was headed with a code number which I assume referred to his security clearance. If he was just a stalking nutcase, I doubt they would have kept his mail. Somewhere down the track he had an epiphany. Either that or he was prepared to state something he’d suspected all along. He wrote, “I have finally caught up with two ex-military men I had been seeking for some time. I am now convinced that Fleur-de-Lis was not an expatriate French or Vietnamese but a local. A Lao. An attractive female. She went by many names but operated out of a noodle shop in Pakse. It was at the ferry that she found her marks and wheedled her way into the inner circle of French administration.”

  ‘There were no internal memos attached to these letters so I doubt anyone took notice of them. They bore the initials of the clerk that received them and stuck them in the box file. The embassy in Vientiane had more important matters to deal with than the investigation of an ex-underground agent. All told, over the period 1954 to 1978, I counted fifty-nine letters. I looked up the writer in the files and found a record dating back to 1953. It was a notification of courier status that Olivier Guittard should be afforded all convenience to speed his travel between Saigon and Europe. He wasn’t even based here. But there was strict security around the couriers. They had to be clearly identified. I found his personnel file. The paper had greyed over time. The ink sucked back into it. It was hard to make out the words, but under “Physical description” I could just about read the sentence, “Distinguishing marks – smallpox scar over right eye”. It’s just as well you didn’t put us on the ferry back to Vientiane.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I imagine that was exactly what he wanted. Why else would he burn down Daeng’s shop if not to have us hurry back to salvage our lives from the ruins?’

  ‘You’d fly straight into his web.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘Gad, I’m stupid.’

  ‘Only moderately. My guess is that being here is the safest place for Daeng.’

  ‘I … I think I have to throw up,’ said Civilai.

  ‘Downstairs,’ said Siri. ‘Second door on …’ But the old boy was gone and probably wouldn’t make it.

  Siri picked his way through the atolls of empty beer bottles and the corpses of a million fire ants lured by the nirvana of lamplight the night before only to be denied enlightenment. He went to the balcony and breathed in the fresh sunrise. It was the day of the finals. The previous day’s losers were already working on their oarsmanship so they might grab a wild card entry to the final round. Even at this early hour they were laughing and exchanging insults.

  Some twenty elephants on the far bank were knee-deep in the river, providing hosing services to one another. They’d been there since Siri first arrived, their mahout drowsing beneath a Laundry-Fruit tree with no particular hurry to move on.

  And, upstream, he caught sight of the tail end of the naval cruiser before it made that long, sweeping turn east. And something inside him gave way like floors in a dynamited building. Daeng. Daeng would befriend the crew of that boat. Daeng would drink with them and get their information. With Civilai and a hundred revellers in Siri’s room, she would curl up on the deck of the boat and sleep off the booze. That was what they’d planned. But the boat had left and there was no sign of Daeng. He thought of Guittard and the twenty-year fixation. And he considered how a little money could secure the services of a pilot and pay off police checkpoints. And a sudden panic flooded over him. All the faith and admiration he had for his wife’s survival skills were suddenly hanging by a thread. She wouldn’t have been prepared. She’s out of practice. She’s not the woman she used to be. All these thoughts and the fear of spending the rest of his life without her coursed like a flash flood through his veins as he ran out of the room. He pushed past Civilai in the doorway and made for the stairs. Already his ailing lungs squeezed in on themselves. His breath came in short wheezy puffs. On the second floor landing he ran into Mr Geung coming out of his room. He too was in a panic. He hadn’t even stopped to dress. His neat pot belly hung over his Minnie Mouse undershorts. He looked petrified.

  ‘Geung,’ said Siri, taking his friend by the shoulders. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Co … co … co … co …’

  ‘Slow down.’

  ‘Comrade Mad … Mad … Madame Daeng.’

  ‘Yes, what about her?’

  Civilai had caught up with them.

  ‘She … she …’ Geung was trying his hardest. Siri massaged his shoulders.

  ‘That’s all right, Geung. Take your time. What about Madame Daeng?’

  ‘She … she slept with me.’

  My spoken French and listening skills were a lot better than I let on. I could read well enough. I was working at the ferry noodle stand breakfast and lunchtime. It meant I got to see a lot of the French administrators and military as they waited in the short queue to cross on the car ferry. I’d go from jeep to truck selling little plastic bags of noodles or iced drinks. I’d sell little. Most of the foreigners thought our food was unhealthy and tasteless. But that wasn’t why I walked the queue. The point was to get noticed. My faltering French was better than most and the French housewives were always looking for staff. My selling point was that I was slow, borderline retarded – an act I worked on. They knew they could get me cheap. ‘Poor mental girl would just be so grateful for the opportunity.’

  My looks were my Achilles heel. The frumpy foreign women didn’t hire anyone too good looking to tempt their husbands. So I made myself look as dowdy as possible. I dressed to appear fat. Wouldn’t wash my hair for weeks at a time. Blacked out a couple of teeth. But that wasn’t necessarily enough to stop the randy Frenchmen from having a go at me. The older military types were the worst. I had one or two tricks up my sleeve for them. My favourite was a letter I carried with me all the time. It was typed in French and signed – so it claimed – by a doctor. It said that this woman, Saifon (I had many names back then), was suffering from a highly contagious and incurable cocktail of vaginal herpes and syphilis. If any of my suitors doubted the veracity of this document, I had discovered a wild pomegranate that, when smeared on the skin, dried to a repugnant, pus-like finish. It was quite harmless but the looks on the faces often made me wish I carried a camera.

  Only twice did I have, to resort to the razorblade trick. In my lunchbox I carried a blood orange, two plums, and a sweet local turnip. When working as a domestic servant in the French houses I was searched every day by the Vietnamese security guards. It was often no more than an excuse for the sleazy little men to have a feel. My fruit and vegetable lunch pack never caused alarm. They never looked closely enough at the sweet turnip to notice the fine slit into which I had inserted the razorblade. I always kept my bag close when I knew my master was on heat.

  The early afternoon following too many glasses of Bordeaux at lunch is often the time their penises become larger than their brains – although neither would achieve record dimensions at the best of times. The moment arrives when he comes at you like a wild boar. He would prefer you begging and screaming, ‘Non, monsieur, je suis vierge.’ But if you share his enthusiasm it stops being rape in his mind and becomes passion. The French love that transition. His ego then readjusts his modus operandi. Your satisfaction becomes part of the show, a chance to let you see what a real man can do for a girl. And that, invariably, gives you a moment. As he removes his boots you reach for your lunch pack. He dives, panting, on top of you. His stinky sweat like a putrid bog. You reach for his testicles. He feels a warm flood of dampness … down there.

  ‘Oh, monsieur,’ you say.

  ‘Oui?’ he grunts.

  ‘Did you know that in a passionate state, pain inflicted in the area of the groin does not reach the brain for a full minute?
’ (Of course my speech isn’t quite as eloquent as that but men rarely give thought to syntax at such a moment.)

  ‘What are you …?’

  You hold up the blade in front of his eyes until he can focus. In your other hand the orange-bloody plums can only be two things. There is a moment of horror frozen on his face. He rolls to one side and looks down to where the crushed orange looks like the after-effects of a machete attack. He staggers bow-legged to the bathroom giving you time to adjust your clothing and leave the room, your dignity intact.

  Of course, you are then looking for another job but it’s worth it.

  They sat under one of the recycled parachute tents by the river; Siri, Daeng, Mr Geung, Comrade Civilai and Ugly, drinking truly horrible coffee.

  ‘All right,’ said Civilai. ‘Forget the fact that your boat has gone without you. Let’s look at the positives.’

  ‘All right,’ said Siri. ‘I’m looking. No, it’s dark. What are they?’

  ‘For one, we have time to strategize.’

  On the walk from the guest house – a walk during which Daeng apologized numerous times to Geung for curling up in his bed that morning – they had briefed her on the horrors that had occurred in Vientiane. Like Siri, she’d taken the news quite calmly. In fact she seemed more interested in the drama unfolding upstream than in her lost livelihood.

  ‘What is it with you two?’ Civilai asked.

  ‘So, this is the way it looks,’ said Daeng, ignoring the question. ‘The cruiser has indeed headed upstream, presumably with Madame Peung who has a Vietnamese accent and her deaf and dumb brother who may or may not whisper in Vietnamese late at night, and a unit of Vietnamese soldiers, but without their unbiased medical observer. I take it everyone has spotted the Vietnamese connection here.’

  ‘Did you get anything from the cruiser’s Lao captain?’ Civilai asked.

  ‘All I could tell was that he’d been briefed privately by the minister. He was under the impression they were there to retrieve the remains of Lao soldiers trapped in the hull of a boat. The minister’s brother was one of them. They’d bring out all the remains and have the coroner sort out who was who. He was told not to interact with the Vietnamese engineers which wasn’t that hard considering he couldn’t speak Vietnamese and they can’t speak Lao. He was angry about being the taxi service.’

  ‘Then that would suggest the minister believes that’s why they’re here,’ said Civilai. ‘What news from the engineers?’

  ‘They think it’s a boat rescue too,’ said Siri. ‘They were instructed to free a small vessel from the mud at the bottom of the river and winch it to the bank. They have sub-aqua equipment. They aren’t particularly happy about it. They were complaining about all that effort and manpower just for a few Lao bones.’

  ‘So, there you have it,’ said Civilai. ‘What’s the mystery here? It all fits. Brother. Bones. Ancestors. Happiness. Wife stops nagging. Minister gets some sleep.’

  ‘What do you make of it, Geung?’ Siri asked.

  Mr Geung’s insights were invariably right on the money. Except he hadn’t spoken since his confession to the doctor that he’d slept with his wife. It was obviously worrying him. He had yet to stop blushing. There was, of course, nothing to be embarrassed about. Madame Daeng returns home after a late-night tipple with the navy to find two men asleep in her bed. Neither is her husband. She goes downstairs. Geung’s room is unlocked. She crawls beneath the mosquito netting, curls up in an empty space on the vast mattress and sleeps like a babe. Had she been less tipsy she would have considered Mr Geung’s fragile emotions and the fact that he had a fiancée back in Vientiane. Mr Geung, being Mr Geung, would have no choice but to tell Tukda of his indiscretion and the relationship would be on shaky ground.

  ‘You have to pun … punish Madame Daeng,’ said Geung as if the party in question were not sitting there in front of him.

  ‘I promise. I shall,’ said Siri.

  ‘She was bad.’

  ‘I know she was. I shall take the leather thong to her this very night.’ (She kicked him under the table.) ‘But in the meantime we’re working here. We are presented with a mystery which appears not to be mysterious. Given all we’ve been through, that in itself is mysterious. If everything is going as expected, why do we all feel so uncomfortable? Something is wrong, Geung. Tell us what it is.’

  Geung looked away from the doctor and stared out across the river. The new day’s races were about to start but he wasn’t focused on the boats. He was quiet for so long they thought he was still sulking, until he said, ‘The ele-phants.’

  ‘What about them?’ Civilai asked.

  ‘Why are the elephants here?’

  They all looked at the small herd, all bloated with water and the mahout rocking in the breeze in his hammock.

  ‘Of course,’ said Civilai. ‘That’s it.’

  12

  A Mekhong Wave

  ‘But he knew,’ said Phosy.

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ whispered Dtui. ‘I’ve finally got her to sleep.’

  ‘If he knew’ – his voice was lower but no less angry – ‘why in hell’s name didn’t he tell me?’

  ‘Well, firstly because you were off in Vieng Xai at one of your midweek junkets.’

  ‘It was a training course. And that’s irrelevant. He could have left a note. He could have told you.’

  ‘Secondly, there wasn’t actually anything to tell. The Frenchman wasn’t a menace at that stage. Siri was making enquiries because an old friend of Madame Daeng was trying to get in touch.’

  ‘You think Siri would go to all the trouble of talking to the German second secretary and the head of the Roads Project if he wasn’t suspicious? They were tight-lipped about it until I told them what their lost tourist had achieved in a few short days. That’s when they put me on to the caretaker at the French embassy. He admitted Siri had been there to look at the archives. He said he didn’t know what the doctor had found and he wouldn’t let me go in to take a look. Said I needed a higher level of clearance. And he was jumpy. He was hiding something. I know he was.’

  Dtui turned her smile towards her sleeping child. She and Madame Daeng had few secrets. She knew exactly what the caretaker was hiding.

  ‘So what do we have on our evil Frenchman?’ she asked.

  ‘Just his fake name and the fact that he forged his travel documents and his work placement. The French embassy in Bangkok faxed a photograph. I’ve sent copies of it everywhere. Nobody answering to that name has left the country by air or by ferry so I’m working on the theory that he’s still around. He’s gone to ground. We’ve searched every boat out of the city. Road blocks on every track heading west. If he’s on his way to Pak Lai he must be on foot. And if that’s the case, Siri and Daeng will be back anytime soon.’

  ‘So you keep saying. Civilai will bring them back. Sergeant Sihot will bring them back. Where are they then?’

  ‘I don’t know, Dtui. I don’t know.’

  It hadn’t been so hard. A fistful of American dollars and a modest fishing boat became a moonlit ferry. You could get shot from either bank of the Mekhong but even soldiers had to sleep. You picked your moment. The fisherman was nervous about rowing across on such a clear night with sentries dotted along the bank. The nerves were misplaced. He should have been focused on his passenger. That’s where the real danger lay. Twenty metres from Thailand and the tyre iron had sent the wiry brown man to the bottom of the great river.

  He knew they’d be watching for him on the way to Pak Lai. The west was closed to him. But the south was hospitable. Thailand needed its tourist dollars and it honed its Thai smiles and its few words of English to suck out every last coin. Foreigners were shown respect, even the ones who deserved none. Barnard had no entry permit, but nobody asked. Transport was efficient and trouble free. He took the local bus to Chiang Khan and on to Bo Phak. And in under six hours he was in Boh Bia staring at a line of forest which the locals told him was the border with Laos. You could pick
your spot. More dollars bought an unnecessary porter and a guide and three asses. It seemed no time at all before they had negotiated the heavily wooded trail through Sanyaburi and arrived at the Mekhong at a spot upriver from some madness of a festival. Cancer will take you the moment you yield to it, but he had that one motivating factor that could drive the terminally ill – that kept them going against all the odds. For some it was love. Family. For some it was a simple thing like adding to the count of bird songs and sunrises. For Barnard it was the dream of leaning over the dead body of Madame Daeng with the blood still warm on his tyre iron.

  ‘It could easily take us a few months, you realize?’ said Madame Daeng.

  They sat dead centre in the longboat of the Uphill Rowing Club. It had taken the crew only five minutes to lose their first heat of the day which sent their average to zero points. Despite the generous atmosphere of a Lao boat race, losing every event and causing damage to others meant that you were disqualified from even the losers’ wooden spoon race in which both boats won a prize. The URC was just about to return home with nothing to show for its efforts until Madame Daeng made them a proposition.

  ‘If we asked them to pull in their oars and let us row we’d be there in half the time,’ said Civilai. ‘They do realize that only sailing boats have a need to tack, don’t they?’

  ‘Where else were we going to find a boat to take us upriver?’ Daeng asked. ‘And look at them. They’re all so happy.’

  ‘They’re on something,’ said Civilai, who spoke from experience.